Who had this on their bingo card?
Teachers, doctors, journalists. And now meteorologists.
Next will be anybody who wears glasses.Our society is edging closer and closer to that depicted in Neal Stephenson’s Anathem…
Those dirty four eyes! They think they’re better than us!
Wait, I wear glasses as well!
I’m so tired of people being riled up against eachother :-(
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What the fuck is wrong with people?
That’s rhetorical and I have a fair understanding about why this is happening. It’s just so bloody frustrating not knowing how to turn this shit around and open the eyes of gen pop to this. People just don’t want to accept that unless we do something right quick, we’re fucked. We might be fucked even if we do everything right, starting tomorrow. And still, pretty much nothing, or token agreements that are cheap enough and not too disruptive to the almighty economy and doesn’t disrupt availability of cheap crap from China and other low cost countries with little to no worker safety or even regard for human life. I’m not saying I’m not part of the problem myself, cuz I sure as hell am. I try to do the right things, but far from all the time and it’s far, far from enough. This needs to come from the top to have an effect, but most, if not all, governments have their lips firmly between the cheeks of very large economic interests that need their diagrams to always be pointing up, no matter what.
I don’t know. If they weren’t such fascist autocratic ass kissers I’d be tempted to join lemmygrad. Revolution, baby. Seriously though, people here seem like an intelligent and rather handsome lot with their hearts in all the right places, so I ask you, what the fuck can we do?
I leave you with a pic of my cat to take the edge off.
What the fuck is wrong with people?
How much time do you have for an answer?
All the time in the world if you can answer my second question instead. 😀
We’re pretty much in the “find out” phase at this point. It’s not pointless to make an effort to improve the world, but the reality is more and more people are so focused on trying to survive that there’s no energy left.
I turn 44 next month, and the most purchasing power I’ve had was on the first day of my first job a month after 9/11. Newspaper editing was in retrospect a poor industry to go into, but what we faced starting 15 years ago is now what everybody’s facing: the industries willing to pay for experience are niche, those jobs are only available if you met the right people in college, and everyone else is expected to smile and pay more than half their wages to housing.
I know every generation thinks they have things uniquely bad, but for those younger than me, the '80s and '90s were an era where people still bought a house to live in, not as a way to make money in three years. Starter homes were still being built. That’s what we were told to expect. Work your ass off in your 20s and 30s, fix your housing costs and enjoy the income experience nets you.
It’s a farce. My annual raise this year vis-a-vis my rent increase has left me with a singularly shitty choice: food or rent. No, I shouldn’t have to get a roommate decades into my career. No, I shouldn’t need a side hustle. Those are the options people immediately jump to, with comes with a starting proposition of: you don’t deserve the basics your landlord did.
Fuck that. I’m not renewing my apartment lease. I’ll find a vehicle I can live in and deal with the hassles of that instead of the first $20K a year I make after taxes and after insurance going to someone who got into the property market while it was about places to live instead of gambling.
I relay all this because the answer I found is not participating in the parts of society that will never benefit me. The only way I’ve found to lessen the existential dread is to question more and more assumptions that were fed to me growing up.
what the fuck can we do?
Save yourself. Be the example, even if you are only an example to your family or to your block. Know you are not alone. Join up with others and make a difference where you can. Be the good apple. Ration your energy and effort.
I’ve watched people I know burn out obsessively trying to change the world, I’ve watched others turn their back on the world and go whole-hog into selfishness.
There is a middle ground for each of us. Find it and occupy it. And have the courage to be kind.
Yeah, came on a bit strong, didn’t I? But you are right of course. I’m not really such a grouch as this comment may have implied. Sad thing is, I’m old enough and lucky enough to probably be dead before the shit really hits the fan. It’s the young that’s gonna feel the brunt of it, and possibly sooner than they expect. I grew up in the 70s and we had hope and a feeling that pretty much anything was possible. The cold war was a bit of a bummer, but the feeling was that we could change things for the better if we tried hard enough. I don’t see that anymore and I’m pretty sad about it.
I know I’ll be ok. Probably. But it’s not about me. I’ve had a pretty good life, all things considered. Ups and downs, sure, but it’s the hopelessness of these times that worry me. We had hope for a better future and kids today won’t have that. All because my generation and those before us are selfish fucks who only look to number one.
I don’t know that it will be ok, but I’m certain it will be different. I see the US emotionally and culturally sliding down the same slope that Russia is going down. I figure they’re 10-15 years ahead of us.
Remember how excited we all were when the Berlin Wall fell? We had that Jesus Jones song roaring in our souls.
There is a wave of negativity and helplessness being thrown at us. We are being driven to be passive, to shrug our shoulders and go buy something to give our lives meaning. Our helpless selfishness feeds profits for others.
We must disengage from that helpless/selfish/profit way of life. It will destroy us. It will eat us up from the inside and leave us hollow and empty.
That doesn’t mean we have to move off-grid and become self-sufficient hermits. It can be as simple as learning to mend our clothes so we don’t buy as many new ones, and not buying into the shame of wearing mended clothes. (Visible mending is punk as fuck.) It can be as simple as saying thank you to cashiers, holding the door for that overloaded mother at the doctor’s office, giving others the benefit of the doubt. (Kindness is punk as fuck, too.) It can be as fulfilling and challenging as joining or creating a knitting group or live music jam or walking club. (Community is also punk as fuck.)
Old punks unite! You’re right. Kindness and trying to do our part as best we can is all we can do. Hope is so very essential to combat the hopelessness, as is kindness. It’s easy to lose hope, but we must fight it however we can. Your comment does make me feel a bit better, thanks. You are wiser than I, which also is punk as fuck.
Oh, I’m not wise, I’m just pissed off. Gotta use my anger as fuel to burn a raging bonfire of KINDNESS.
I’m honestly super into this mentality, and love this thread – Kindness in order to maintain the hope that remains in all of us that care about each other and our world!
The right is willing to resort to credible threats of violence to achieve their selfish ends, even if it results in the destruction of all life on Earth.
Meanwhile, otherwise decent people on the political left are too cowardly and comfortable to take the measures that are necessary to protect our world.
Non-paywall article on the same topic: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/iowa-meteorologist-chris-gloninger-quits-18-year-career-after-receiving-death-threat-over-his-climate-coverage/
I’m saddened by this, but not surprised. The rationalist in me wants to think that at some point the red state attacks on science will have consequences in worse quality of life for their residents, but I’m not optimistic enough to believe that will happen before the whole culture collapses.
I’m not surprised in the least.
I work in healthcare and I’ve been so burnt out after working through COVID despite how politicized it was, not knowing if I was risking my life, my loved ones’ lives, or my own permanent sense of smell and taste, all while getting told off by ignorant, selfish pieces of crap just for wearing a mask and taking an illness that I personally witnessed kill many people seriously, not to mention being overworked and understaffed for literally YEARS due to a combination of baby boomers retiring while simultaneously increasing the need for healthcare workers by needing more care as they age, coworkers finding other jobs because of their own burnout, and hospital administration trying to maximize profits at the expense of the workers and at the expense of patient care that I just up and resigned from my own job a week ago.
I don’t even know what I’m going to do. I withdrew my retirement account early and I’m just taking some time to figure it out right now. Tbh though, the idea of going back to healthcare makes me feel physically ill. And that’s really sad because I got into it to help people, but after the way people acted during the worst pandemic we’ve had in a century I don’t want to help anyone anymore. I just want a normal 9 to 5 where I’ll have weekends, evenings, and holidays off and very little to zero risk of bringing a contagious and deadly or debilitating virus home to my family.
Wife is a nurse that works at a hospital and when she’d come home from her shift, when Covid was raging, she’d derobe in the garage and run to the shower to wash. We had a 3 year old and 6 month old at the time. And she risked all our lives to help people that didn’t take the issue seriously and some that even yelled at her that she faked their bloodwork because Covid wasn’t real.
Thank you for trying to help others, even when they don’t believe it’s real.
Meanwhile in TX we are hitting record heat indexes after last year hitting “record # of days above 100” and coming off another once a century drought lol
people are so dumb it’s painful to watch. This particular guy seems to be up north. His watchers better prepare because everyone’s moving that way. Entire contitnents are going to start migrating to them sooner than we realize.
